Conflict

Conflict

Assessment of a Conflict Situation
Introduction
Conflict cannot be avoided when you have groups of people with different personalities and beliefs working together. Managing conflict involves implementing strategies to decrease negative aspects of conflict and to increase the positive aspects of conflict to enhance learning and empower employees to increase work performance. Healthcare involves multiple stakeholders who have individual beliefs in how patient care and conflict should be handled. As a nurse leader I am accountable in managing workflow so as to avoid conflict and ensure patient safety is kept at the forefront of practice. In this paper I will describe a situation in which several parties were involved with conflict and the outcomes.
Parties involved
The primary participants in this conflict were nursing staff on the medical/surgical unit. The secondary party was the union and interested third parties were the state board of nursing, human resources, and myself. I would also like to state that the patients were not aware of the conflict but were third party participants due to the nature of the event. No patient harm was found through the investigation so reporting was not necessary.
In the primary group there was a history with the individual nurse that initiated this conflict situation. This person was a union steward who was individualistic, voiced their opinion at in opportune times, was not respected by their co-workers, and controlled situations by intimidating others through threats of workplace harassment. The employee behavior was not dealt with in the past because the previous nursing leader was intimidated. Without leadership presence employee’s perception of conflict was that poor employee performance would not be dealt with. This particular employee intimidated everyone from the staff to the leader. This employee was male and had developed many personal relationships with other male physicians so the female staff...

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